04/01/2021 17:47
Clarín.com
Cities
Updated 04/01/2021 17:55
The Trade Union Association of Underground and Premetro Workers (
AGTSyP
) announced
a stoppage of the
six subway and premetro lines
for next Saturday between 10 am and 5 pm, after the death of a worker who is reported to have died from
exposure to asbestos
.
Jorge Pacci
was an assistant at Line B stations, and the Metrodelegates assure that he died as a result of pneumoconiosis due to exposure to asbestos that led to lung metastasis.
From the union they indicated that "the facilities are still contaminated by this carcinogenic material" and questioned that "despite having knowledge of this, neither SBASE nor Metrovías have reversed this situation."
Pacci was a subway worker and had been battling cancer for more than a year.
From the AGTSyP they warned that it is the second death due to exposure to asbestos, a polluting substance present in different types of wagons.
Subway workers press conference.
Photo capture.
In a press conference to announce the measure of "mourning and protest", they said that there are "42 workers affected, three colleagues with cancer, one of them operated, another deceased and another in treatment. There are almost 3,000 colleagues to study," they detailed. .
"We are dismayed, not only by the loss of a colleague but by the future that awaits us. We are investigating that
not only there is asbestos in the trains
, but in almost all the subway facilities," they denounced.
Then they said that making a protest measure in the pandemic is very hard, but that it is even more so "not only to see that colleagues die due to the negligence of the State and the employer, but to know that we are going to live our whole lives waiting for the bad news" .
Finally, they asked the City Government, SBASE and Metrovías for a plan to remove asbestos "or we will not continue to tolerate seeing how colleagues leave due to negligence."
Tour of the workshop where they remove asbestos from the cars on the B subway line.
Photo Germán García Adrasti.
Francisco Ledesma
, secretary of Occupational Health and Conditions in the Environment at Work of the AGTSyP, told the newspaper
Tiempo Argentino
that "the union doctor went to see him several times" to Pacci.
"With the studies we thought it could be, but to have more certainty we asked the Vaccarezza del Muñiz institute and there a doctor,
Lilian Capone
, a specialist in reading studies for asbestos, unique in South America could see him. She made the diagnosis that what he had was due to exposure "to that material, he said.
Ledesma said that it is not clear if the worker had contracted covid in addition to the cancer picture.
"It was shocking for us. It
falls very badly
throughout the subway," he said,
At the same time he reported that the first to die from this substance was a little over a month ago and that he had not worked since 2013 "but we did a job to show that what he had was due to having been in contact with asbestos."
AFG
Look also
Asbestos: what is it and what diseases does it usually cause
Descent to "the bubble": the underground workshop where asbestos is removed from subway cars